Saturday, July 07, 2012

End It With Your High School English Teacher Day!

You’re going to college. You’re going to meet so many exciting new people and you’re going to be learning so many things. It’s been fun dating your high school English teacher secretly because it’s illegal, but you both knew it couldn’t go on forever.

“You’ve taught me so much,” tell him. “About sex. About Emily Dickinson. About what it’s like to be in a failed marriage and to crave youth so badly you’d risk your livelihood to be inside of it. But I can’t bring you with me to Case Western.”

He’ll claim he’s been meaning to leave his wife and job anyway and go find someplace where he could tutor and work on his novel.

Please don’t ask him, “What novel?”

“What novel?” you ask.

Jesus. That was cruel. Now he’s just sputtering about how you’re all he has left.

“You have the knowledge that you’ve taught me so much,” say. “The impression you’ve made on me can never be unmade. I’ll wear it wherever I go.”

He’ll accuse you of wanting to sleep with your professors and he’ll say you’re leaving because he could never get a slot at a college.

“It’s not my fault. It’s too political!” he’ll explain.

You hadn’t thought about sleeping with professors, and you wonder if the fact that them sleeping with you isn’t illegal so much as frowned upon would be enough to get your motor running.

“Please don’t end it,” your high school English teacher is crying now. “Please just promise we’ll see each other when you come home on your breaks.”

Show him the envelopes. One addressed to the police. The other addressed to the schools superintendent.

“Please don’t take these pre-written letters, detailing how you made a pass at me and we made love just a few days before my seventeenth birthday, as an indication that I didn’t love and care for you. I just need a clean break. So if you try to contact me again I’ll drop these both in the mail and you’ll lose your job and have your name added to a sex offender registry.”

Kiss him on the cheek.

“My youth is mine,” tell him. Then get out of his Nissan and go inside to have dinner with your parents.